Our Cats Ate Spaghetti

I grew up in an Italian household. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, but I also had no choice in the matter. Everyone in the family was Italian. Even the pets. When I was very little, my grandmother had two parakeets that would fly from their open cage to perch on her fingers when she called them. Venga qui, she’d say, in her clipped Sicilian dialect. Then she’d follow with Dammi un bacio, and each would give her a quick peck on the face. Sometimes she’d go through the same routine, but entirely in English. Those birds, I was amazed to discover, were bilingual.

For the rest of us, it was how we talked about food that gave us our identity. For example, we never said pasta. I doubt I ever heard the word as a child. We had either spaghetti or linguini; everything else was macaroni, which were available in dozens of shapes. Our brand referred to each by name, but also by product numbers that were printed right on the box. For some reason, maybe to sound less Italian and more American, my mother used the numbers rather than the actual names.

“What are we having tonight?”

“Number seventeen.”

“Didn’t we have seventeen on Sunday?”

“No, that was thirty-nine.”

I never got the hang of the system, and so I had to wait until the meal was served before registering approval or disappointment. Different shapes had different textures, and then, as now, texture mattered.

Sunday mornings found my parents at the stove right after breakfast, frying garlic in a thin puddle of olive oil, then browning meatballs and sausage before adding them to an enormous pot of crushed tomatoes. Without fail, my father would brag that he was the better cook, and while his back was turned, my mother would roll her eyes and twirl a finger next to her temple. Meanwhile, the aroma of simmering gravy filled the house. Sometimes they’d give us a sample, which we’d eat from a small bowl, standing up in the kitchen. On Sundays we ate at three o’clock, but it was impossible to wait that long.

Gravy was what we called it, I think because it had meat. Sauce was meatless, and we usually had that for supper one night during the week. It was supper on week nights, but dinner on Sundays — another subtle distinction that I learned through repetition, rather than from any logical explanation. If there were leftovers, we’d give the cats a cold meatball and some spaghetti. They devoured it, as I looked on. I loved to watch the cats eat.

Today, supermarket shelves are filled with pasta sauces sold in jars. I shunned these products for many years, mostly because of my mother’s unfailing response to the very idea of our using them: “Your grandmother would turn over in her grave.” My mother had a way of painting unpleasant images with her words, but that one was by far the worst. And it did the trick. As an adult, I occasionally use sauce from a jar for a quick pizza, but rarely on pasta. Homemade sauce is too easy to make. And more important, it lets my grandmother rest in peace.

A slow cooker, such as a Crock-Pot, is my new favorite way to make sauce. Let it cook for several hours — the longer, the better — stirring every forty-five minutes or so. A regular pot is fine, too, and the sauce will be ready sooner. But there’s something about a long, low heat that transforms the mixture of ingredients into a single, beautiful food. Sauce, too, needs the right texture.

Pour some olive oil into the pot, enough to almost cover the bottom. Cut the garlic into tiny pieces (or use a garlic press) and add it to the oil. Use medium heat. If you’re making the sauce on the stove, cook the garlic for just a couple of minutes, and try not to let it turn brown. Then add the can of crushed tomatoes. Swirl a little water around in the almost empty can to grab the last of the tomatoes and pour that into the pot. Sprinkle in about a quarter-teaspoon each of salt, pepper, and oregano. After you stop sneezing, add a tablespoon of sugar and one or two leaves of fresh basil, if you have it. As with the slow cooker, the sauce on the stove will be better if you give it more time. The slow cooker should be on medium heat, but if you’re using a regular pot, wait about thirty minutes, then turn the heat down to low. Let it simmer, covered, for as long as you can wait. For a thicker sauce, remove the cover.

About thirty minutes before you want to eat, fill a large pot about three-quarters full of water. Add a little salt, if you want. When the water is boiling, slip the pasta into the pot. The cooking time is on the box, and will vary depending on the thickness and shape. If you’re making spaghetti, do not test it by throwing some at the wall to see if it sticks. This is an idiotic waste of food and makes a big mess. Taste a strand. It should be slightly chewy. Undercooked and overcooked are both sad outcomes, so stay in the kitchen and check it every minute or so.

Pour the pasta into a colander and shake it around until the water is gone. Then put the pasta back into the pot and stir in some sauce to prevent it from sticking together. Add a little more sauce and stir again. This is how they eat pasta in Italy, without pouring more sauce on top. I like a lot of sauce, so I always put more. There’s no wrong way. Sprinkle parmesan cheese and eat up.

To make garlic bread, slice a loaf of Italian bread or some Kaiser rolls in half. Cover the inside surfaces with olive oil (use a knife or spoon to spread the oil), then sprinkle generously with garlic powder (make sure it’s garlic powder, not garlic salt). Put on a pan and into the oven for 5-10 minutes at 375 degrees, then broil for another minute or two. Keep an eye on it — dark is delicious, but charcoal isn’t.

A small garden salad and a glass of red wine and you’re there. Be sure to save some for the cat.

thanks for the story. My cats ate (and still eat) cat food. But my grandparents (all 4 were Italian) had dogs and cats that ate macaroni too.
And then i went to Italy where i have dozens of cousins. And NO ONE saves left over pasta. It goes to the dogs, cats and pigs. even painstakingly hand made pasta!!!!! I must admit I was surprised to see cats eating penne with gusto!

I didn’t know that Grandma had birds, let alone bilingual ones! I don’t remember mom referring to the macaroni by numbers but I do remember it was either spaghetti or “fat” macaroni. Back then it was actually rigatoni but the rigatoni they have today has a different shape – not sure why they changed it, but it annoys me that they did.
I’m hungry now.

Love that you call it “gravy” which to me is a mix of roasted meat juices, a sprinkle of flour and stock added slowly to scrape together an unctuous brown, gloopy glow! As for the cooking of the pasta, I have heard it said that you need to have the water as salted as the Mediterranean . . . can this be true???
Your sauce sounds divine. Some cats have all the luck!

I’ve only recently started to add salt to the water and it does seem to be an improvement. My mother used to pour in a heart-stopping amount of salt, and that turned me off to the idea for a long time.

THANK YOU! My best friend was married to Pete, a New York City born Sicilian, who cooks like your grandmother did. Pete will be cooking for the gods when he dies, and I sure hope I’m at his table.
But he and my friend divorced before he gave me his grandmother’s meatball recipe and the sauce it goes with.
Will we get the meaty recipe next?
One of my cats adores anything with tomatoes in it, even raw tomatoes.
And my grandmother had a blue/gold macaw named something I can no longer remember, who could understand English and Polish..and could cuss in both. What was amazing was that he knew who could speak English (me) but not Polish (me) and would confine himself solely to the language he knew one could understand. My grandma knew both.

If I could start all over, I’d study animal language — especially birds. They’re amazing. About the meaty recipe: I haven’t eaten meat in twenty-two years, so the post would likely be filled with sarcasm and other types of annoying remarks, and it would just start a lot of arguments. Why don’t you write that post? Maybe you could get back in touch with Pete.

This brings back memories — of growing up in our own (suburban Philly) Italian household. Gravy made every Sunday (with meatballs, pork, a veal bone and sometimes bracciole); macaroni again every Thursday, then spaghetti “aglio e olio” on meatless Fridays. Still love making my own gravy (and marinara sauce), but occasionally punt and open a jar, usually of the vodka sauce. I doctor it up with cooked sweet sausages and a few basil shreds. Thanks for a delicious post.

Loved your post and your recipe. I’m not Italian, but my godparents were. I can still smell the aromas from their kitchen. My husband got a rare treat on his birthday. Spaghetti with homemade sauce, meatballs and sausage. Great meal. BTW, we had a cat who ate spaghetti. Really, how could anyone pass up a good bowl of spaghetti and meat sauce?

I was expecting a scolding from you, so the thank you caught me by surprise. In theory, fresh tomatoes should work at least as well, if not better. However, my experience with homegrown tomatoes was not a happy one. Let me know if you decide to try it.

A few caveats about fresh tomatoes–if they’re juicy, drain them well, or the sauce will be very watery. Also, while some people don’t mind the seeds, some might find them unappetizing. (I suppose whatever seeds are left in the processed tomatoes have been cooked to softness and aren’t very noticeable.) And remember to remove the core where the stem was attached–I hate finding that in the canned tomatoes, or worse, in the finished sauce. I think the much fresher flavor is worth the effort if you can get tasty tomatoes to start with.

I’m guilty of using canned sauce all.the.time. However, I’ve been contemplating lately how much my life would improve if I’d try some homemade sauce. Thanks for sharing the recipe. If the fact that it was from an Italian didn’t win me over, the words slow cooker did.

On a side note, I think this cat-food business is ridiculous. Cats eat, and are supposed to eat anything they can get their claws on. I say that because have a cat who stopped eating fish, of all things, after starting with cat-food. Thankfully, she’s getting more interested in fish after a year of that junk.

I’ m pleased to discover that I’ve been making spagetti correctly all these years, purely by instinct, right down to the garlic powder bread (which I thought was cheating). The only thing I might do differently is to throw a tidge of red wine in the pot at some simmering point. Oh, now I’m hungry.

I bet it was your mom who did the hard work of making Sunday supper meatballs.

I’m stuck in a household that has only one-quarter of the Italian blood left, my grandmother on my father’s side, Matedero. I LOVE spaghetti, my wife, not so much. So I don’t get it as often as I did growing up. Spaghetti night was Wednesday, always. I have to admit I use a jar sauce from the grocery store when I make it, but I’m going to try your sauce tonight in the crock pot. Notice I said, I make it, my wife will not. But she’ll eat it, since it’s not often I cook, and there’s not many things I can, but I’ve got the pasta down and I never use a wall.

I can’t tell you how many relatives were going to turn over in their graves by my mother for things I did or suggested I do. Maybe they were just tired of laying on their backs?

Yes! As you know, my father’s Italian, and the half of my family who isn’t grew up in a neighborhood that was. So we had supper during the week, and Sunday Dinner at 2pm. I thought that was an eternity — I’d never have made it ’til 3.

A tablespoon of sugar? You know, in all the years I’ve made sauce I’ve never used sugar. I’ll have to try it. Thanks for the recipe, and the good words for slow cookers. I haven’t used mine much this winter, I’ll have to get it out. Snow today. Good for something slow-cooked tomorrow.

I thought my cats were weird for loving biscuits. Now I don’t feel so bad…spaghetti! It is nice to hear about your family. I can see it just like a movie….the writing is always better than the screen. Sounds like a good meal, and if it doesn’t work out the cats can clean up! Enjoyed your post that is always a bit of sunshine!

When I write about my Dad, I know that of course not everyone has the same experiences, and will someone understand it runs through my brain, but on the other hand it is just such a wonderful thing to tell a story. Your family stories are warm, wonderful, and if someone can’t relate it seems to me that it wouldn’t be difficult to be mesmerized by how someone else spent their childhood. Thanks for the comment!

My willing suspension of disbelief went right out the window with your mom calling macaroni by their numbers. She did NOT! 😀 And you can’t convince me she did. I’ll only believe it if Jac jumps in and says it’s so.

You brought up some great memories for me. In my childhood home, mom would fry up the meatballs and add them to the simmering sauce. So for breakfast on Sundays, it was a fried meatball with a bit of the “raw” sauce and some Locatelli grated cheese. (We also ate this one night as an evening snack while we watched the movie Fatso. As Dom was layering the sauce and cheese on his meatball, so were we. The power of suggestion.)

I agree with you about the texture of macaroni. Spaghetti is my favorite. And much more digestible. There’s something about rigatoni that sits in my gut for 18 hours like a bowling ball.

Oh, and I didn’t use the word pasta until I was well into adulthood. It was always macaroni. My Sicilian relatives called it sauce; my Neapolitan relatives called it gravy.

(Sometimes my Sicilian great grandfather would put pigs feet in the sauce. Ugh, jeez. This little piggy went to market but left his little oofies behind. Yuk.)

Here I was thinking that I’d read another great post about childhood reminiscing and I got not only that but a great recipe and a resulting intense hunger. Only thing available to eat right now – a banana and instant Ramen noodles. Being a Chinese (on a diet) is much less fun than being an Italian.

For me right now, the best part about NOT being Italian is that I can eat Ragu without any guilt. I love Ragu, and it’s the only sauce I’ll eat in the house. Strange as this part may sound, I won’t eat tomato sauce outside of the home except for lasagna; lasagna conquers all.

Reading this has made me beyond hungry. My brothers and I used fling a strand at the wall to see it if would stick. Drove my mom batty to walk into the kitchen a few weeks later and notice the hardened spaghetti still stuck to the upper corner of the wall. Once pasta hardens, it’s like cement, not easy to scrape off.

My daughter found a site with wonderful short films–nearly as brilliant in their own way as your posts are, bronxboy . . . . if you haven’t seen them, I invite you and your readers to visit this take on “Western Spaghetti”–gravy/sauce included. Check out some of the other shorts as well. Hope you like them, because I think I see a lot of parallels to your work.

Your grandma’s parakeets are surely amazing! and for the cat just don’t get them used to those foods, because in the future they won’t eat anything else except spaghetti. That’s what happened to my dog. We always feed her Fried Chicken and Barbeque, now guess what! My dog won’t eat if it’s not Fried Chicken and Barbeque.

I love the story! I am second generation Italian and so remember those same kinds of things from my grandmothers… Yes we always had spaghetti and never called it pasta. Today however I call it pasta like they do in Italia!

It’s midnight, and now I want linguini. One of my best girlfriends in Montreal is Italian. I treasure each jar of sauce she gives me. I was “La Damigella D’Onore”(I had to look that up…) at her wedding. I should do a post on that experience. I don’t think I’ve had a comparable meal at a wedding since. If I tried to make this, I would probably set off the smoke alarm, even with a slow cooker.

I know that midnight feeling, Rufina. I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten up to cook at that hour, but I hope I do someday. By the way, our smoke alarm goes off when we make toast. Don’t let that stop you. The sauce is easy.

And, yes, a post on an Italian wedding in Montreal would be fun to write. And fun to read, I’m sure.

I’m forever getting entrapped in your blogs about food. I’m starved now… I love spaghetti… and linguini, and oh…….. manicotti………… I also love garlic bread or any kind of bread for that matter… And dessert. I love dessert. Did I mention that I’m starved?

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